


My Charade is the Event of the Season

by ladivvinatravestia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Coming Out, Dean vs in-universe Supernatural fandom, Gen, background/established Dean Winchester/Castiel, canon-typical disregard for actual driving distances in the continental US of A, canon-typical misgendering and sexism, everybody lives in the bunker like it’s Avengers Tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29771898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladivvinatravestia/pseuds/ladivvinatravestia
Summary: Dean goes to San Diego Comic Con with Charlie, but he doesn’t want to wear a costume.
Relationships: Charlie Bradbury & Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	My Charade is the Event of the Season

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to [falashad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falashad/pseuds/Falashad) for the beta.
> 
> Additional warnings and notes: AUish after s5 and again after s8. I wanted to make this light and comedic, but it’s full of Dean getting himself into the kinds of situations that are most likely to cause him to have trouble regulating his emotions, so. Poor Dean. It gets a little exhausting inside his head, sometimes. I haven’t personally been to SDCC since [checks notes] 2008 so some of my details might be a little off. The Dean in this fic is weirded out by incest ships, but two other characters in the fic discuss Thorki and Wincest in a neutral-to-positive fashion and I, your author, am in favour of both those ships. If Kate hates the way the Supernatural series ended in this universe, I hope she manages to yeet herself out of MCU fandom before Endgame.

Sam is in Dean’s bedroom, sitting on Dean’s bed. 

Sam is in Dean’s bedroom, sitting on Dean’s bed, watching Dean pack, because he is the worst little brother. He’s storing all of this up as ammunition against the next time Dean wants to make fun of him for being a nerd who loves research, or a giant girl, or something.

He says, “Aren’t you taking any costumes?”

“Nope,” says Dean, and continues throwing socks into his duffel.

“Not even one?” Sam persists.

“No, Sammy,” says Dean.

“You’re going to a comic con and you’re not going to wear any costumes?” Sam says.

“That’s right,” Dean agrees. He maybe shoves his sock drawer shut a little louder than he meant to, because the next thing he knows, Kevin and Cas have also wandered into the room.

“Hey guys,” says Kevin.

“Dean isn’t taking any costumes to the con,” Sam tells him, and Kevin’s eyebrows fly toward his hairline.

“What? Why not?” he asks, leaning against the door frame.

“Dean, I thought it was customary to wear costumes at a comic convention?” says Cas, and he seats himself next to Sam on the bed.

“It  _ is _ !” says Kevin, sounding outraged.

“Lots of people go to cons and don’t dress up in costumes,” says Dean, and pulls open his shirt drawer. The brown plaid, the green plaid, and the blue plaid are all clean, but - aw, damn, the dark red one must still be in the wash.

“I just think you’ll be sad when you get there and everyone else is in costume except you, is all,” says Sam, and how can he sound so goddamn reasonable when he’s saying stupid shit like that?

Dean whirls around to glare at him. It doesn’t matter if Kevin and Cas get caught in the crossfire, they’re taking Sam’s side here.

“Sam, I’m not going to be sad that I’m not wearing a costume. I’m a normal person and I like Star Trek and Star Wars a normal amount, okay?”

“Sure, Jan,” says Sam. Kevin fails to hide a smile. Cas gets a pass only because Dean knows he has no idea what is and isn’t a normal amount of liking Star Trek and Star Wars.

“Besides, come on, what would I even dress up as?”

“Captain Kirk?” Sam suggests.

“A cowboy,” says Cas. Who continues to get a pass because he doesn’t know what isn’t normal.

“Fred from Scooby-Doo,” says Kevin.

Dean pulls a stack of shirts out of the drawer and shuts it as angrily as he can, to show what he thinks of that suggestion.

“A firefighter,” says Cas, rather charmingly missing the mark for the second time in a row. Dean has to turn away for a moment and bite his cheek to hide his stupid grin.

“A ghostbuster!” says Sam. “You know, with the big proton pack backpack and the -”

“A ghostfacer,” Kevin interrupts, with a shit-eating grin. “You know, I was looking at the programming and those guys actually have a panel session, Ghost Hunting for Beginners or something like that? Here, let me check the schedule -”

“Okay, that’s it, everybody out!” Dean says, making shooing motions with his hands. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to pack anything with you assholes taking up all the space in here.”

~~

Dean emerges from his room with his duffel packed and his mind full of instructions and contingencies. Not for the trip, but for Sam, Kevin, and Cas to look after themselves while he’s away.

“Okay,” he says, leading them into the kitchen, “there’s leftovers in the fridge that should last you all of today and tomorrow - yes, everything is vegetarian - and then I left a bunch of single-portion meals in the freezer for later in the week with instructions on how to reheat them in the microwave or on the stovetop.”

He opens the freezer to point to the meals in question and Cas tilts his head at them politely. Sam and Kevin exchange some kind of Look.

“If you don’t like any of those, or if you run out, I left the takeout menus in this drawer -” Dean pulls it open to show them “ -and over here are some recipes that should be pretty easy to make if you want to try -”

Cas picks up one of the recipes to look at it, and Sam says,

“Dean, we’re grown adults, I think we can look after ourselves for a week while you’re away.”

It hits Dean like a splash of cold water to the face. Does every time, really. Every time he’s reminded that his only purpose in life is “take care of Sammy,” but Sammy doesn’t actually need Dean to take care of him. He takes a few deep breaths so that his last words to Sam before he takes off for the week won’t be something hurtful. But maybe Sam is also getting slightly better at realizing when he’s hit a sore spot, because he says,

“But all this looks really good, so, y’know, thanks.”

“Yeah, dude, whatever,” says Dean, and they are saved from any further having to talk about their feelings by Charlie’s arrival. She announces herself with her usual cheery,

“What’s up, bitches?”

~~

Road tripping with Charlie is not at all like road tripping with Sam, or Sam and Cas. For one thing, Charlie never learned to drive a stick shift. They spend an abortive fifteen minutes on trying to teach her, during which Dean turns into his own father no less than three times, leaving Charlie a teary, shaking mess. Dean apologizes profusely, walks around the car a couple of times to cool down, and they continue on their way.

After they’ve both relaxed enough from that false start, the conversation starts flowing again as naturally as it usually does between them. Soon they’re talking about all sorts of things that Sam is never interested in or doesn’t have the patience for. Favourite Casa Erotica compilations. Best 80s action flicks. Decisions they would have made differently if they were the Captain of the Enterprise and how that would have affected how the rest of the plot of the episode played out. Hey, this is pretty fun!

And. And she’s not just willing to indulge Dean’s love of greasy diner food, she shares it. In fact, she has mapped out several truck stops and diners along their route to San Diego that are famed on the internet for having particularly good snacks. They try the best chili cheese fries in Kansas and the best jalapeno poppers in Arizona, but it’s after they’re returning to the car with cups of coffee and the best sticky buns in Southern California that Charlie sticks Dean with a question he thought he’d successfully avoided.

“So,” she says, “what costumes did you bring?”

Dean chokes on his coffee.

~~

The sun is low in the sky as they pull in to San Diego, and Dean can already feel his teeth starting to grind. He really hates driving in big cities. He cranks the air conditioning and tightens his hands on the steering wheel, reminding himself that no matter how long they have to sit in traffic on the freeway, or who cuts him off, he has no call to snap at Charlie. It’s another stressful hour and a half at a slow crawl through gridlock on the freeway, but finally the maze of overpasses clears out to regular streets again and Charlie is excitedly pointing out landmarks that mean the convention center and the hotel they’re staying at are right around the corner.

There are way more people in costumes than Dean thought there would be, especially as he navigates the last few blocks to the parkade, which he thinks is pretty nerdy considering the con hasn’t even started yet. He feels good about the number of lingering, admiring looks he and his Baby get, right up until some girl in some kind of costume he doesn’t even recognize comes right up to the window while he’s waiting in line to take a ticket for the parkade and says,

“That is an  _ amazing _ Dean Winchester cosplay, I just have to say.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Dean says. Here we go, it’s starting already.

“Oh, except, no Samulet -”

“The fuck is a Samulet?” says Dean.

Charlie leans forward from the passenger seat. “Don’t mind him, he’s never actually been to a con before,” she says.

“And yet he’s driving an exact replica of Baby?” the girl says.

“Aw, Baby, don’t listen to her,” Dean says, patting the steering wheel.

“Anyway,” says the girl, shoving a business card at Dean, “a friend of mine is selling resin replica Samulets and Angel Blades and stuff on the trade show floor at -”

The car in front of Dean moves up, thank fuck.

“Gotta go,” says Dean, and pulls forward, leaving the girl shaking her head at the door to the parkade.

“How did that girl know those things about you?” Charlie asks.

“Fucking Chuck,” Dean mutters.

“Chuck...Shurley?” Charlie says slowly. Dean gets a ticket for the parkade and starts circling around in search of a spot. “The  _ Supernatural _ books.”

“Yeah,” says Dean.

“Wow, Becky told me they were detailed, but I didn’t realize they were quite  _ that _ detailed.”

“Becky?” says Dean, screeching to a halt to let two teenagers with blue hair wheel a cart full of gigantic, improbably-shaped foam prop swords across his path. “Yechie Becky -” No, that’s not very nice of him, she was actually really helpful with that case of the prematurely-called crossroads deals up in Delaware last year, what  _ is _ her last name? “ -Becky Rosen?”

“Ye-es?” says Charlie slowly. “You know her?”

Dean snorts. “Sure, she’s one of Sammy’s girlfriends.”

“Oh,  _ this _ I have to hear about,” says Charlie, and digs out her phone. “Anyway, she’s one of our roommates, I’m texting her to come help us with the luggage.”

“What,” says Dean, “you didn’t read all about it in book - uh -”

“I only read the first book,  _ Woman in White _ ,” says Charlie. “It felt kind of invasive getting that much detail about your and Sam’s inner lives, and besides, Chuck’s prose is terrible.”

Becky and the other roommate, Kate - not werewolf-Kate, just some other chick named Kate who is a friend of Becky’s - arrive in the parkade. Dean just has the one duffel, like usual, but Charlie has a bunch of different costumes and her Glinda costume somehow takes up three storage bins all on its own.

Becky shrieks and launches herself directly at Dean, giving him the kind of full-body hug that would probably knock them both over if he didn’t have so much practice at hand-to-hand combat. Charlie looks skeptical, Kate looks amused.

“Dean! Oh. My. God!” shrieks Becky.

“Didn’t know you knew Charlie’s friend,” says Kate.

“From  _ Supernatural _ fandom!” says Becky in a singsong voice, pulling aside the neckline of her t-shirt to show her anti-possession tattoo. Obediently, Dean does the same. “But how do you know Charlie?” she asks Dean.

“From Moondoor,” lies Charlie.

Becky narrows her eyes at Charlie, as though she knows there’s more to it than just that. Dean suspects the three of them may need to trade secret handshakes later, or something like that, but for now he settles for opening the trunk and pulling out bins.

“LARP?” asks Kate. “I’m a SCAdian myself.”

Dean doesn’t know what that is, so he just says, “Yeah, I’m the Queen’s Handmaiden.”

“All the real power is behind the thrones, anyway,” Kate agrees.

~~

The hotel room is a severe challenge to Dean’s sense of orderliness. There are pieces of clothing and costumes strewn all over every available surface. There’s a sewing machine set precariously on a desk, an ironing board groaning under piles of books and t-shirts, and extension cords crossing each other every which way. He bites back an urge to shout and steps out into the hallway. It’s not his space, these are independent adults and roommates, not people whose safety he is responsible for. He will just keep all of his own stuff inside his duffel and not try to control everybody else’s shit. He can do this. He walks back into the room.

“ -didn’t know your other guest was a dude,” Kate is saying.

“Sorry, is that a problem?” says Charlie, sounding close to tears again. Dean can feel his fingers curling into fists. Nobody gets to intimidate his friends.

“No, oh my god, of course not, but - do you want us to clear some space and ask for a cot to be brought up or something?”

Dean looks at Charlie. Charlie looks at Dean.

“I think we can share a bed without perving on each other, don’t you?” she says.

“What?” squeaks Dean. Shut up, it’s a manly squeak. “Ew, no.” Wait, that came out wrong. Charlie is a gorgeous chick, of course, but - “I mean -”

“Dean, shut up and stop digging,” says Charlie, swatting him on the shoulder.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and drops his duffel on the side of the bed closest to the door.

“I mean,” says Kate, seemingly mostly to herself, ”we should probably clear some space anyway -”

Dean would really really love that, but he’s sure it’s better if he doesn’t snap that out as an order. “Do what you gotta, sister. I’m just going to let Sammy and the guys know we made it here in one piece. Here, Becky, want to come and be in a selfie?”

~~

When Sam sends back his own selfie later, a picture of some spring rolls and a fancy Vietnamese soup that he, Kevin and Cas made - which, show-offs - Dean passes his phone to Becky to show her the picture.

“Oh, is that Cas?” she asks. “He’s  _ really _ good-looking, wow.”

Dean agrees, but there’s something more important at stake here. “Better-looking than Sam?” he teases.

“Dean,” squeaks Becky.

“Anyway, and that’s Kevin, he’s our new prophet,” Dean continues.

“What, like he’s going to continue the  _ Supernatural _ series?” Becky asks.

“He fuckin’ better not,” grumbles Dean.

Becky frowns. “What does he do, then?”

Dean’s not honestly sure himself, especially not now that they’ve permanently sealed off Heaven and Hell. “Uh, he helps Sam with annoying baby brother things, mostly?”

“Well, I don’t care if they do find another writer to continue the novels, I was totally done after  _ Swan Song _ ,” says Kate, when Becky passes Dean’s phone over to her and Charlie so they can see the guys’ culinary efforts. “Nice Cas cosplay, though.”

“Which one is  _ Swan Song _ ?” Dean hisses to Becky, and she hisses back more detail than anyone should rightly remember about that time Lucifer and Michael wore Dean’s two kid brothers to the prom. Granted that was pretty much the highlight - or lowlight, whatever, of the Winchester brothers’ careers as hunters, and Dean doesn’t even like having thousands of crazy fangirls reading about his fucked-up life, but -

“Hang on, why?”

“Don’t get me wrong, the whole apocalypse arc was incredible, and all of the ways that the narrative paralleled the boys and their dad with the angels and demons and God was just -” Kate kisses her fingers and makes a pleased noise, “but then, after how good all of that was, that heteronormative ending just felt like a pasted-on betrayal.”

Dean’s head spins, like it does every time he tries to have a conversation with a  _ Supernatural _ fan, so he grasps at the first thing he’s pretty sure won’t make him need to explore his own life too much more closely.

“Hetero-what?”

“Did you  _ read _ the book?” Kate asks.

“Um,” says Becky.

“Heteronormativity,” says Charlie, “like when everyone kept assuming I was your wife or your girlfriend every time we stopped at a gas station or a truck stop,” and Dean thinks about how weird that had made him feel.

“Dean’s not exactly  _ in Supernatural _ fandom, precisely,” Becky tells Kate.

“Oh, no, he just drives a beautifully-restored ‘67 Impala with a devil’s trap spray-painted inside the trunk,” says Kate, raising her eyebrows.

“After Lucifer killed Cas and Bobby and then Sam pulled himself, Michael, and Adam into the cage,” Becky says in a rush, “you honored Sam’s dying wish and drove back to spend the rest of your life in white picket fence suburbia with Lisa and Ben.”

“I  _ what! _ ?” Dean says, horrified at the prospect of taking his shitty, dangerous lifestyle and laying it on Lisa and Ben’s doorstep, after he’d already accidentally put them in danger. “No, no, hell no, why would I do something like that? Why would Sam  _ want _ me to do something like that?” He’s getting upset again, and he can tell it’s scaring Charlie and Becky, but he’s also too upset to stop himself from yelling, and that makes him even more upset. “What the fuck, Chuck?”

“Right?” says Kate. “I’m still pretty fuckin’ salty about it too. Honestly, it kinda soured me on the whole fandom. I’m mostly in MCU these days, Becky too.”

Dean tries to focus on that instead. “Yeah? Like Hulk and Iron Man and stuff?”

“Actually more like Thorki, mostly,” says Becky.

“What’s a Thorki?”

“Thor - slash - Loki,” Kate explains. Dean has now been around fandom enough that he doesn’t need any more explanation of what that means. He maybe hasn’t watched the Avengers movie quite as many times as he’s watched actual classics like  _ Wrath of Khan _ and  _ Empire Strikes Back _ , but he does know enough to know that -

“Thor and Loki are ...also... brothers.”

“Oh!” says Becky, sounding startled. “Uh, I guess they are, yeah, but it’s, like, a completely different dynamic than Wincest. It’s more like, I don’t know, love turned toxic and then back again, but with extra sass.”

“No, no, no, Thorki is  _ exactly _ like Wincest,” says Kate. “You have the younger brother who’s desperately trying to live up to Dad, who hates him and holds him to unbelievable standards, and then you have the older brother who doesn’t fully understand how what he’s doing hurts, and -”

Dean jumps up and starts pacing toward the door, feeling like he’s probably going to lose his shit again. It’s bad enough that Chuck wrote all of these details about his and Sam’s lives and published them for the whole world to see, but it’s fucking unbearable that all of these fans are able to look through Chuck’s frankly terrible writing to see the painfully uncomfortable truths about his and Sam’s inner lives.

“Dean doesn’t really like Wincest,” Becky tells Kate, which is certainly a much more tactful way of telling her to shut up than Dean could have managed.

Kate stops herself. “Sorry, I forgot there are people who came to the fandom later who never really got into it. What’s nice about Supernatural though is that there are actually a lot of really good ships, do you have a different OTP?”

Dean could just not say anything. He’s so used to keeping all the details of his personal life secret, even lying about them if he has to. It’s safer for him and everybody else he talks to if they don’t know he hunts angels and demons, vampires and werewolves. Of course when he started shacking up with an angel, that was just another thing it felt safer to keep secret. But it’s actually kind of a relief hanging out with people like Charlie and Becky, who he can just be honest with about his hunting life. And it would probably feel the same way if he told Becky and Kate about Cas - they clearly already know Charlie is a lesbian, and Kate is wearing a rainbow bracelet and a couple of other striped bracelets that Dean is sure must mean something specific. Fuck it.

“I like, um -” Dean snaps his fingers. Shit, what was the word those high school musical girls had used for his relationship with Cas?

“Destiel?” says Kate.

“Yeah, that’s what it’s called,” says Dean.

“Destiel is  _ canon _ ?” Becky squeaks.

“So is that why your friend was cosplaying Cas in, like, your kitchen?” asks Kate.

Dean has no trouble answering this one at all. “No,” he says, a dumb grin crossing his face as he thinks about Cas’ -  _ unique _ \- fashion sense. “It’s because he’s a giant dork.”

Kate and Charlie both laugh. Becky is busy tweeting,

“Oh Emm Gee, Destiel is canon!”

Kate says, “So, Dean, what cosplays did you bring?”

Son of a  _ bitch _ .

~~

The next day, Becky and Kate get dressed in matching costumes that are, like, Thor and Loki as sailor scouts or something. Charlie’s costume is some kind of elf chick. Charlie, Becky, and Kate all start trying to explain who she is to Dean but all he gets out of it is that it’s a character from Dragon Age, whatever that is. Dean gets dressed in his usual jeans and a plaid shirt. The convention hasn’t actually started yet, but they need to stand around all day in a line to pick up their passes, even though they have already paid for them. It’s a nice day and there’s a nice green lawn to chill on while they wait and there’s a super cool aircraft carrier just a little way down the waterfront that Charlie says is a museum.

“We can visit it, right?” asks Dean.

“Yes,  _ after _ we pick up our passes,” Charlie promises.

The crowd bothers Dean less than it normally might, because everyone is super friendly and just wants to talk about nerd stuff. People keep coming up to Becky to talk to her about her Destiel canon tweet from yesterday, and to talk to Charlie about what a great Tallis cosplay she apparently has, but then Kate starts ranting to someone dressed like a Klingon about how  _ Into Darkness _ was an affront to the memory of  _ Wrath of Khan _ and that is definitely something Dean can talk about intelligently.

The Klingon person, whose name is also Kate (“I’m Federation Kate, that’s Klingon Kate,” explains Kate #1) has a real live  _ bat’leth _ that she lets Dean try, and he takes a couple of swings through the air with it, wondering how good it would be for taking the heads off of vampires. Then there’s the guy dressed as Doc Brown from  _ Back to the Future _ , Klingon Kate’s nicely-curvy friend in her original series Star Trek minidress and boots, a woman in Victory Rolls and a WWII army jacket flirting with everyone around her, a Queen of Hearts whose costume must have taken at least as many bins as Charlie’s Glinda costume with her toddler daughter dressed as Alice, and a chick in an honest-to-god working model of the exosuit cargo loader from Aliens. And that’s not even to mention all of the people dressed as superheroes, wizards, furries, and anime characters.

Dean looks around. There are a few people who aren’t wearing any kind of costumes. But all the ones who aren’t, are wearing t-shirts with pop culture characters on them, or game logos, or famous quotes, or science puns. Dean might be the only person here that’s dressed like a normal person. And, sure, he’s hanging out with a bunch of chicks who are definitely nerds and who definitely belong here, but how is anybody going to know that he is also a nerd who definitely belongs here?

Because, he hadn’t really thought it would matter to him, back when he was packing at the bunker, but looking around, it really matters now. All these people form a great big community. Kind of like hunters, except without any of the danger to anyone’s lives, or any of the built-in distrust that seems to go along with that danger. Just a community built around loving cool movies and stuff. And he  _ doesn’t _ want to mark himself as an outsider here. He could actually really fit in, even if it’s just for a couple of days.

“Hey Charlie,” he says.

“Hm?”

“After we get our passes, how hard do you think it would be to throw some costumes together?”

Becky and Kate shriek, jumping up and down and clapping their hands together. What are they, twelve? Charlie grins.

“I knew you’d come around eventually,” she says.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Visit me on tumblr at [ladivvinatravestia](https://ladivvinatravestia.tumblr.com)


End file.
